Quick return for Kevin Friend

Kevin Friend refereed us as recently as four weeks ago when he took charge of the home game against West Ham United and tomorrow he will referee our away game against Tottenham Hotspur.

The last three games have seen our games refereed by the bottom three in RATE THE REF but we can climb two places above that trio to find Friend who is 14th with a rating of 61.84 prior to the West Ham game.

He’s had some poor games refereeing us and it is probably the time to highlight his performance in this particular fixture three years ago on our last visit to White Hart Lane. That was the day he failed to send off Spurs’ substitute Moussa Sissoko who almost immediately set up their winning goal.

This season he’s refereed 13 games, ten of them in the Premier League, two in the Championship and one in the League Cup. There have been 39 yellow and three red cards in those games. Twenty of the yellow cards have gone to home team players and 19 to away team players. The most recent red card was shown to Newcastle’s Sean Longstaff in a 1-1 home draw against Wolves.

Friend’s last game was Southampton’s 2-1 win against Norwich two days ago. Both teams picked up one yellow card; M Djenepo from Southampton was carded as well as Norwich’s Sam Byram.

The fourth official is Rob Jones, he refereed our League Cup exit at Burton last season, while it is Lee Mason on VAR and he was the man in the middle in our recent 2-2 draw at Aston Villa.